Author name: Missy Andrews

purple grapes on the vine

Finding Energy for the Work of Education

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When I was engaged in my homeschooling efforts, I thought I had that wholeheartedness part down. I pushed and strove and worked diligently. But whether I did this “as to the Lord and not to please men,” well, that varied from day to day, from moment to moment. And in those moments when the fear of man drove me, the homeschooling project became a snare, an idol that threatened to devour me and my children…

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The Gospel for Homeschool Parents and Teachers

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It’s back-to-school time and emotions are running high. I can almost hear the air crackling with energy. Some of us are excited at the thought of another year of books and bouquets of sharpened pencils. Crisp fall days, sharp minds, early mornings, and familiar routines beckon and promise order, productivity, and progress. Others will admit to being a bit anxious, filled with a nagging fear that this year might look just like last year – a failure, that is…

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illustration from the cover of Gary Schmidt's Pay Attention, Carter Jones

Review: Pay Attention, Carter Jones

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When young Carter Jones opens his door at 7:15 one morning, he never expects to find an English butler. Enter Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, a gentleman’s gentleman from England, whose master, Carter’s grandfather, willed him to the family upon his death. When Carter’s mother, stating the obvious, suggests a dearth of gentlemen upon the premises, the butler merely eyes Carter, retorting, “Perhaps not yet…”

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The Wound of Individuality and the Literary Experience

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I was recently troubled by a conversation that occurred in a book club I attend. We’d read The Five Wounds, a contemporary novel by Kirstin Valdez Quade about a dysfunctional, multi-generational Hispanic family. A participant expressed doubt about his ability to read Quade’s novel with proper understanding and “sensitivity,” because he doesn’t share the author’s heritage or gender…

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illustration from the cover of Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad is Untrue

Scheherezade and the King: A Modern Narrative Diversion Addressing an Ancient Problem

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When five-year-old Khosrou’s Shiite Muslim mother converts to Christianity, his life changes forever. Soon he finds himself hurried onto a plane, leaving behind his father and the familiar landscape of Iran to live as a refugee in the United States. Rural Oklahoma’s flat and dusty landscape isn’t the only thing unfamiliar to him; his very self seems strange in his transplanted condition. Everything is new: new home, new father, new school, new language. He even has a new, American name: Daniel. Who is he now? Will he ever feel at home in this new place? Will he ever belong in this new life?…

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Homeschooling and Identity

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From the moment we are old enough to be self-aware, we are on a quest to discover who we are. This search for identity is complicated by the many, disparate voices around us, but what they all have in common is a fundamental presupposition that identity is created – that we, as human beings, make ourselves. Aristotle gets credit for saying something of this sort initially. He said that we are what we do continually, which I think explains a lot of the psychological angst associated with our self-concepts…

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An Open Letter to the New COVID-19 Homeschooler

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As I sat rubbing sleep from my eyes this morning, wondering what new coronavirus mandates might come to disrupt our routines today, I found myself on social media. The comments and videos that most affected me were those from you moms who recently discovered that you were homeschooling by government mandate. You look tired, bewildered, and overwhelmed. You look like beginning swimmers who have been thrown in the deep end of the swimming pool – with your infants, toddlers, and teens in tow. My heart goes out to you…

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catholic confessional booth

Penitence and Pain: Donne’s Holy Sonnet III

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In Holy Sonnet III, Donne finds himself in a state of violent and prolonged grief, yet unable to cry. He marks the tortuous effects of this condition, even as he admits responsibility for it. Speaking of tears as if they spring from a limited cask, he creates an image of his irresponsible and wasteful usage, which has left him with a water shortage when he most has need of the relief such “showers of rain” would afford him. He remembers the many tears he spent in his pursuit of idolatry and marks them wasted. And yet he cried and sighed and grieved. The waste was his sin, and from this he is forced to repent in his present need, finding himself dry and wasted…

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